The Spoilervited
Feb. 19th, 2009 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorhathorThe American Heart Association is still interested in me. I'm supposed to go meet a manager on Friday for one last interview, then we'll see. They pay more than Bank of America, and they're closer, so I think I may want that job more.
Nancy and I were talking about my jobs through Facebook and she abbreviated both companies, and those are now my favorite way to refer to them. It's much shorter and easier to rattle off when talking about my job. BOA. And if they slavedrive me, they become BOA Constrictor, haha. And AHA. A-HA! I found a job through AHA! :D
I'll let everyone know how it comes out.
I want to do some writing for "She Just Wanted to be Heard" tonight, but I feel I need a warm up first. Spent a large portion of last night doing research for chapters coming up esp. concerning Colin, my Brit character. How much tea do Brits consume each day? What are biscuits? What are scones? Aaaaall that stuff. Also researched his secret, which would be a spoiler. *locks mouth and throws away the key*
So instead, I'll spoil an entire movie for you as my writing warm up! Do not read below the cut if you are planning on seeing A Tale of Two Sisters or The Uninvited. Unless you want big honking spoilers for both. Another reason I'm going to type this up is because a few people have expressed that they like reading my summaries of movies. :)
I edited this post tonight, 2-19, to reflect things that have been clarified on my second viewing of the movie. Yes, I liked it just that much. Also, I still had some money on my gift card. XD
Background for anyone unfamiliar with these movies: ATOTS is a Korean semi-horror movie and TU is its American remake.
First off, I get why the movie is called A Tale of Two Sisters (which will here on out be abbreviated as ATOTS), but I think it's a lousy title. Just doesn't have much umph. I'm looking more for a title that sums up the movie's secrets without fully revealing everything. But I get it, many Asian movies are given very literal titles and sometimes they sound silly to Americans or just plain suck. (I'm aware that the original title of this movie was something like Rose, Lotus, but I don't like that title either. :P Okay, maybe it has special meaning in Korea. But I'm a dumb American! Give me a story-related title.)
Now, why The Uninvited? You have to grasp at straws to make it fit anything in the film, and there was a tv show in the late 90's with the same name, which makes it very hard for me to find anything related to the movie on the net besides reviews. I want to read fanfiction! Also, there's another Asian horror movie called The Uninvited - when they remake that, what will the remake be called now?! I think they could have done better. Anyway, this movie will here on out be abbreviated TU.
I know a lot of people are going to cut down TU simply because it's a remake, but I have a more open mind than that. ATOTS was a good movie. However, certain aspects of it were very confusing to me, and I don't think I ever would have gotten it if you guys hadn't explained it to me (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
_aiji_ and cleapet). I kind of prefer the stepmonster actually being there throughout the events of the movie instead of the teen stepdaughter being just that crazy as to pretend to be her. I don't know, I go back and forth on that. I mean, on one hand, how nuts do you have to be to openly pretend to be your stepmother to other family members? And on the other hand, that part went totally over my head. To this day, I would still be going, "What the hell was up with that dinner scene?" if you guys hadn't explained it to me. That kind of affected my ability to enjoy the movie. But, I think if I watched it again, I'd probably like it more the second time. (Yes, I have only watched it once.)
Really, they changed so many things about the story (added to it) in TU that they really are their own, slightly related movies. I love them both for their own merits.
Now, I have to admit, at least 25% of the reason why I loved TU is the setting. Lake house! With a boat house! Deliveries made by boat right to your dock! It reminded me so heavily of my aunt and uncle's house in Louisiana. They have a big house right on a lake with a boat house and a dock; it's so beautiful. If ever I get rich, I want a house on a lake with a dock and boating and fishing. That may sound weird to those of you who know I can't swim, but that's what life vests are for. :P I still love to go boating and fishing. The whole movie made me think of all the great visits I've had to my aunt and uncle's. ^_^ Well, except for the murders. ;)
Things I learned from IMDB: The family's name is Rydell. (Which instantly makes me think of Grease. :D) I can't remember if it stayed the same from screenplay to movie, but I'll edit this post if I find out different once I see the movie again. EDIT!: In the movie, the family's last name is Ivers. So they did change it. Second, another working title they had for the American version was Apparition. Hey, I like that a lot better! I wish they'd gone with that, because it fits better with the film. There are apparitions throughout the entire movie, and I'm not just talking about Anna and Alex's mom. ;)
Anywho, here's the basic premise: Anna Ivers is coming home from a mental hospital after ten months of treatment. Her mom was sick for a long time and spent some amount of months in the family's boathouse. She liked sleeping better out there. Then one night, a night Anna cannot remember, someone didn't fully shut off the faucet on a container of boat fuel. The gas leaked out of the faucet, a candle ignited it, and BOOOOOM! The boathouse blew up with mom inside. That same night, Anna slit her wrists.
But now she's better. Isn't she? Her doctor seems to think so. As Anna's packing her things, an inmate from across the hall comes over and voices her doubts to Anna, that maybe she's not really well and shouldn't go home. (In a really mean way, even referring to Anna's scarred wrists.) Anna is disturbed and tries to escape her. An orderly comes over and tells the crazy lady to leave Anna alone, let her pack. Crazy lady says to Anna if you leave, who will I tell my stories to? <--- Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz!
Anna runs out to her father, who drives them home. But home has changed. Dad has moved mom's nurse, Rachael, a hot young blonde thang, into the house. Of course, Anna doesn't like the woman who seems to have replaced her dead mother. She finds that Rachael has taken down the chalkboard that hung in the kitchen since Anna was a little girl. The boathouse is being refurbished. But Alex is still there. Alex, Anna's older(?) sister. (She looks older to me, anyway.) They reconnect AND conspire to find as much dirt as they can on Rachael as a way to get out their frustrations over her presence. In fact, Alex claims that dad was fucking Rachael long before mom died, which may explain why mommy slept out in the boathouse.
The girls put the chalkboard back up, ruining Rachael's "perfect Barbie kitchen," hehehe, I liked that. The line goes something like, "Did you see her face? It's like we totally jacked her perfect Barbie kitchen." XD Rachael is played by an actress I've never really seen much of, Elizabeth Banks, and she does a nice balance of "I may be eeeeevil" and "I'm trying to be nice and tolerate my future husband's offspring because I have to." Anna kind of tries to get along with her while Alex is a sarcastic, dry-witted bitch (I really liked her. :D She was funny and was played by one of my favorite young actresses, Arielle Kebbel. The great screamer in The Grudge 2!). She even takes the batteries out of Rachael's vibrator!! XD
But Anna keeps seeing ghosts. She sees her mother, a burned husk in the boathouse, who points at Rachael and rasps, "Murrrrdeeeeer!" She sees a little red-haired girl and her two brothers. (The little girl provides one of my favorite effects when she drops a glass of milk and it turns into blood when the glass shatters. She looks kind of cute in the family photo they show later, but as a ghost was one of the homeliest kids I've ever seen. >_< Death was not kind to her.) What are these ghosts trying to tell her?
Then Anna sees Matt again. Matt was her date at a party the night the boathouse blew up. He tries to tell her that he saw something that night, something related to what really happened, but Rachael interrupts them. They agree to meet at The Rock, a spot really high up on a cliff overlooking the lake (<--- Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz!), at 11pm that night so he can tell her what he knows. Matt doesn't show up. Anna and Alex are perplexed.
Anna has a nightmare that night that Matt comes in her window, dripping wet, and tries to make out with her. Suddenly, his back is all fucked up, and he crawls around on the floor crying out in pain. Anna wakes up to the sound of a helicopter outside.
She and Alex go down to the side of the water to see what's going on. The police drag a body into the boat and, you guessed it, it's Matt... with a broken back. Ooooh.
Anna and Alex believe more and more that Rachael is behind all the deaths, and that they're next on her list. They think that first, she rigged things so the boathouse would blow up and kill Mom. Then she killed Matt to keep him quiet. They start digging up dirt on her. The name on her ID and the name on her passport do not match. They think, aliases! They call up some nursing agency (well, actually, Alex calls the nursing agency <--- Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz!) and find out that Rachael doesn't even exist, according to them. Anna confronts Rachael with this information (which doesn't seem very smart, considering she thinks Rachael is trying to kill her, but I can see it making sense to a teenager that the law and her dad are going to protect her and that she can make accusations without having to worry about her safety), and Rachael basically doesn't dignify such nonsense with an answer. She treats Anna like a scheming teen who's just making up stories to hurt the new woman in her father's life, and kicks her out of her room so she can get ready for the dinner party they're having that night.
During the scene where Alex calls the nursing agency, she provides another great, funny line that reminds me why she's my favorite character in the movie. She's asking about Rachael, whose last name is Summers. The person on the phone asks how her name is spelled. Alex goes, "S-U-M-M... yes, M as in Mom... E-R-S... as in Satan." XD XD
Some point around here, Anna asks her dad straight out if he's going to marry Rachael, and he says yes, they are engaged. She tries to tell him some of the stuff she's found out and he treats her the same as Rachael did on the matter.
At the dinner party, Dad asks Anna to try to get along with Rachael. Rachael is cooking this big roast and she puts it out on the cutting board to cool. Anna's supposed to take out the garbage to make future stepmommy happy, but of course, the garbage fucks with her. It MOVES, which actually scared me because it looked cool. They do a jump scare with a can that falls out of the bag and rolls under the stove. Anna goes to get it, and little red-haired girl jumps out and RAAAH! "You're next!" she says. Anna jumps back into the kitchen's center island, knocking stepmommy's roast to the floor. This next part made me laugh because it was just done really well. Rachael comes in, sees the roast on the floor, thinks Anna did it on purpose to ruin her dinner party, and grabs a steak fork. She shoves it at Anna and yells, "WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME?!" in an absolutely perfect mom tone. XD More fuel to make stepmommy look evil. Or is she just the frustrated stepmom dealing with a difficult stepdaughter who almost ruined her dinner party? Then Rachael stabs the roast and puts it back on the cutting board. XD Makes you wonder if she served it to her guests anyway.
At this point, Dad goes out of town for some business meeting. Conveniently leaving Rachael and the girls alone together.
At Matt's funeral, Anna sees the little red-haired girl again. She leads Anna deeper into the cemetery, meeting up with her brothers, and takes Anna right to their graves. The Wright children.
Back at home, Anna and Alex do an internet search for the name. They find the story of the Wright family in old newspapers. Mom died in a car crash. The father hired a nanny to help him look after the children in his wife's absence. Nurse Mildred Kemp was the children's nanny, and she drugged and stabbed all three Wright children to death. (Yes, the red-haired girl and her brothers.) Mildred was obsessed with Mr. Wright and was trying to get everybody out of the way so she'd have him all to herself. Anna and Alex notice that in the family photo, Mrs. Wright is wearing a triple string of pearls that is exactly like a necklace that Rachael has. They think EUREKA! Rachael stole the pearls from Mrs. Wright. Rachael is Mildred Kemp!
What they don't know is that while they are discussing the newspaper article, Rachael is listening outside the door.
The girls think that if they can just take that necklace to the police, they'll have to believe that Rachael is Mildred Kemp. (Yeah, teenager logic again. Maybe if the necklace has some of the Wright's DNA on it, it'll prove something, but otherwise, it's not foolproof evidence.) They set about trying to get it. Alex tells Anna to go downstairs and steal Rachael's keys to the car while she gets the pearls. While downstairs, Anna hears, "Ahhh!" ::ker-thump thump thump!:: from upstairs. Oh noes! She creeps up the stairs and finds Alex half-conscious on the floor. Alex says Rachael snuck up on her and drugged her. Anna doesn't want to leave her, but Alex convinces her to go for help. Anna barely gets away, as Rachael comes running out at the last second and almost gets in the car before she speeds off.
On second viewing, there's a whole scene I'm leaving out here. Anna has a fight scene with Rachael where she manages to get the pearls from her. Rachael seems to admit her guilt during this scene, but does she really? Then Anna barricades herself in Alex's room, where she finds Alex on the floor, and then climbs out the window to escape.
I would think this is the point where Rachael called Anna's father and told him to come home. He shows up in a little bit, and it just makes sense.
Anna tells the whole story to the local police chief. He says hmm, Mildred Kemp, I remember that story. Do you have any proof? Anna plops the necklace down on his desk. Police chief says he's got to check some things out, but Anna is frantic - "We've got to go back to my house NOW, Alex is still there! I'm afraid something bad is going to happen to her!" The police chief gives her a funny look and says something like, "Nothing bad's going to happen to anybody, Anna." <--- Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! He assures her he'll take care of everything, that she should just stay there and sit tight.
Anna falls asleep on the couch in the chief's office. Later, she is awakened by Rachael and the police chief holding her down and injecting her with a sedative. Oh noes, Rachael was able to convince him that Anna is crazy! Back home, Anna wakes up a little and groggily watches as Rachael carries her up the stairs. (Which is a slightly funny thought. I mean, I know Anna is a tiny little thing and Rachael is a nurse used to hefting old sick people, but it's still funny to watch a woman carry a teen girl around.) Rachael puts her on her bed and changes her clothes, putting her in her nightgown, while she babbles and bitches about how Anna has ruined everything. Anna sees a knife on her nightstand, which I guess they're implying she put there earlier for protection, and she tries to reach it. Alex appears at her door, going, "Shhhhh..." so Rachael won't know she's there, and then Anna blacks out.
Sometime later, she wakes up. The house is quiet. Anna goes into the hall and finds blood all over the carpet. The very thick trail of blood leads down the stairs and outside. Anna, with dread, follows it to a trashcan on the porch. She knows she has to look, though, and lifts the lid.
Rachael's head is in the trashcan.
Alex comes around the corner with the knife in her hand. She's got blood all over her, is shaking, and says, "I had to do it. She was going to kill us. You know I had to do it, right?" Of course, Anna knows she had to do it, and they hug.
Just then, Dad arrives at home. The girls stand together, holding hands, ready to tell him everything that happened. Dad's like WTF?!?! He says, "What did you do?!"
THE TWIST WILL LAND IN FIVE... FOUR...
The conversation goes something like this (majorly paraphrasing here):
Anna: "Alex had to do it, Dad! Rachael was going to kill us!"
Dad: "What? ANNA, what have you done?!"
Anna: "I didn't do it, Dad. Alex, tell him!"
Dad: "Anna, stop it!"
Alex: "You always ignore me, Dad!"
Anna: "Dad, listen to her! You never listen to Alex!"
Dad takes Anna by the shoulders and says, "Anna, stop this now. You know what happened to your sister. ALEX IS DEAD. She died in the fire."
DUNT-DUNT-DAAAAAAAAAAH!!
Now, I already knew that twist was going to happen because I had seen the original movie. The really fun part is going back and watching the movie again, knowing Alex is already dead. Seeing how everyone ignored Alex but in a way that it didn't exactly tip you off. Seeing how Anna was the only one who really interacted with her. They do it in a really awesome way, too. Like, one scene, Alex is there, but only Anna really acknowledges her. Then Alex leaves, and Rachael starts talking to Anna about the day she met them, talking about Alex doing her "regular teenage bitchy thing." It makes it seem like Rachael was prompted to talk about Alex's attitude because Alex was being a sarcastic bitch in the previous scene. Very nice. I would have been totally fooled if I hadn't already known Alex was dead.
Anyway, they show Anna finally remembering what really happened the night the boathouse exploded. She caught her father and Rachael having sex, so she was upset. She takes a candle lamp thing out with her to the boathouse to get some gas in a watering can. Upon second viewing, I believe that Anna intended to take the gas into the house and use it to set Rachael on fire. The reason why I think this will be explained when we get to the last scene. Alex comes in from the party and chats with her. Because she's freaking out, Anna doesn't make sure she turns the faucet all the way off. She stomps out with her watering can, and Alex follows her. When she slams the door, the forgotten candle falls to the floor in the path of the rivulet of gas.
It's obvious something's wrong, and Alex tries to get it out of her, but Anna ignores her and goes up the hill in the direction of the house. Alex hears their mother ringing her bell to tell them she wants something. She says, "Coming, Mom," and goes into the boathouse.
A few seconds later, KA-BOOOOOOM!!! Anna whirls around in horror to see her mother and sister go up in flames.
Then they show how her overwhelming guilt led her to concoct the whole story of how Rachael murdered everybody. What adult, much less a teenage girl, would want to admit to anyone else, much less themselves, that their actions led to the deaths of two people they love? I mean, the guilt they heaped on that girl. I love it. :D Even if it was an accident, who wouldn't feel horrible? It's no wonder she tried to kill herself. When they brought her home, it was easier for her mentally disturbed little mind to pretend Alex was still alive, still there for her, and that the evil stepmother was responsible for everything. Anna even went so far as to MURDER MATT, pushing him off the cliff, to keep up her charade that Rachael was trying to hide what she did. Rachael was the perfect person to pin it all on; Anna already hated her for being a home wrecker and all.
But Anna was the one who really killed Rachael. (Turns out she DID get a hold of that knife on the nightstand.) In the end, Rachael was completely innocent! That's the biggest revelation. The police take Anna away, and the chief asks Mr. Ivers why the name on Rachael's passport doesn't match her ID. He replies that she had an ex-boyfriend who was stalking her, so she changed her name. Again, more fuel for Anna's fantasies. The call to the nursing service never happened - ALEX made the "call." More of Anna's delusions. The police chief asks where Anna got all that stuff about Rachael being Mildred Kemp. Where did she even get the idea?
We see Anna back at the mental hospital, now a true murderer. She's cutting Rachael out of all of the recent family pictures. At the beginning of the movie, the doctor told her to go home and be a normal teenager, to "finish what you started." Now, he comes to her door to ask her how she's doing, and she says she did what he said - she finished what she started. This is why I think Anna intended to kill Rachael the night she caught her having sex with her dad; that night, she didn't finish it. But now, she has. The doctor walks away, looking disturbed.
We see the crazy lady from the beginning of the movie, across the hall. She's playing with a triple string of pearls. She says, "Welcome home, Anna," and closes her door.
The name on the door? Mildred Kemp.
TA-DAAAAAA! Those of you who have seen ATOTS can see the big differences between the two films. They become very different stories with all the additions. Like I said, sometimes I like the idea of Soo-mi being so crazy that she actually pretends to be her stepmother so she can create conflict and then save her dead sister from that conflict, and other times, I remember how confused I was the first time I watched the movie because of it. Overall, I like that the American movie didn't copy that part of the story because I'm not sure Americans could have done that part as well as it was done in ATOTS. The things that TU added and changed were done very effectively, so it's good that the Americans stuck with what we do well - body counts! :D
I wish TU had done the two scenes that I liked the best, though - the ghost getting up on the bed with Soo-mi and the ghost reaching out from under the sink to grab... was it the stepmother? Somebody got grabbed. Those two scenes scared the crap out of me. They could have done those scenes in TU. In fact, I remember seeing the ghost reaching out from under the stove and grabbing Anna on the commercial, but they cut it from the final film, for some reason. They did something sort of like the scene where the ghost floated up on the bed with Soo-mi, but the ghost stayed on Anna's floor. :P If they'd included those scenes in TU, the movie would have been PERFECT.
I do like the change of the sister dying in the boathouse explosion. In ATOTS, how did Soo-yeon die, anyway? We saw her find their mother dead in the wardrobe cabinet, and then the cabinet fell on her, and at that point, she was still alive and literally kicking (and screaming for help). But, what? Did they leave her under there to starve to death or something? :P I thought that was too important a detail to leave out. If I missed it, feel free to fill in the details for me.
Technically, Soo-mi didn't kill anybody that I can see. Anna? Accidentally killed two, and purposefully murdered one. Guilt still ate both of them up. Both totally fascinating stories.
Rewatching the scene where Rachael and Anna have a physical fight was even better the second time around because I understood more about what was going on. At this point, Rachael has heard Anna talking to "Alex" in her room, going over this story about Rachael being Mildred Kemp. She's thinking oh my God, Anna's crazy. Not only does she think Alex is still alive, but she thinks I'm a murderer. When Rachael confronts Anna in her bedroom, she talks to her like someone who's trying to calm down an insane person. When Anna grabs for the pearl necklace, Rachael tries to get her with the syringe full of sedative. That's why the fight ensues. The whole scene is really cool once you know how Rachael is really seeing it. When you watch it the first time, you're not entirely sure if the woman is evil or not; she seems to be confessing to her crimes. Anna: "We know what you did!" Rachael (trying to calm down and take control of the crazy girl before her): "You caught me." She's obviously thinking that the safer way to deal with Anna is to play along with her delusions. I'm not sure I wouldn't do something very similar, knowing that the girl is so far gone that she actually talks out loud to her dead sister. (That's a question I would have for the screenwriter. Was it *all* in Anna's head, or in some scenes, was she interacting with her sister's ghost?)
I'd really like to smack some movie reviewers around, though, for spoiling the movie for people who haven't seen ATOTS. I saw more than one review where they referred to the moment where it's revealed that Alex has been dead the whole time as a "Sixth Sense-like twist." Yeah, thanks. That fact is a huge part of the movie's secret. If I hadn't already known that, I would have been SO pissed to have that ruined for me. I mean, if you're reading my summary, you already knew there were huge spoilers. When you read a movie review, you don't expect to have the biggest moment of it ruined for you by some asshole reviewer. Sheesh.
Noticed this on second viewing: The movie seems to take place in Massachusetts. The whole thing with the Wright family took place somewhere near Boston, as revealed by the newspaper articles being in the Boston Herald, about a "local" incident. Which is somewhere "west" of where the Ivers live, in a nearby county. OH, THANK YOU, MOVIE. *crossovers brew in my head*
* <--- Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz!: I stole the Plot Point Alarm from MST3K :D
REMINDER: Under the cut are major, major spoilers for the movies A Tale of Two Sisters and The Uninvited (2009). If you don't want these movies spoiled for you, don't click on the cut!!!
Nancy and I were talking about my jobs through Facebook and she abbreviated both companies, and those are now my favorite way to refer to them. It's much shorter and easier to rattle off when talking about my job. BOA. And if they slavedrive me, they become BOA Constrictor, haha. And AHA. A-HA! I found a job through AHA! :D
I'll let everyone know how it comes out.
I want to do some writing for "She Just Wanted to be Heard" tonight, but I feel I need a warm up first. Spent a large portion of last night doing research for chapters coming up esp. concerning Colin, my Brit character. How much tea do Brits consume each day? What are biscuits? What are scones? Aaaaall that stuff. Also researched his secret, which would be a spoiler. *locks mouth and throws away the key*
So instead, I'll spoil an entire movie for you as my writing warm up! Do not read below the cut if you are planning on seeing A Tale of Two Sisters or The Uninvited. Unless you want big honking spoilers for both. Another reason I'm going to type this up is because a few people have expressed that they like reading my summaries of movies. :)
I edited this post tonight, 2-19, to reflect things that have been clarified on my second viewing of the movie. Yes, I liked it just that much. Also, I still had some money on my gift card. XD
Background for anyone unfamiliar with these movies: ATOTS is a Korean semi-horror movie and TU is its American remake.
First off, I get why the movie is called A Tale of Two Sisters (which will here on out be abbreviated as ATOTS), but I think it's a lousy title. Just doesn't have much umph. I'm looking more for a title that sums up the movie's secrets without fully revealing everything. But I get it, many Asian movies are given very literal titles and sometimes they sound silly to Americans or just plain suck. (I'm aware that the original title of this movie was something like Rose, Lotus, but I don't like that title either. :P Okay, maybe it has special meaning in Korea. But I'm a dumb American! Give me a story-related title.)
Now, why The Uninvited? You have to grasp at straws to make it fit anything in the film, and there was a tv show in the late 90's with the same name, which makes it very hard for me to find anything related to the movie on the net besides reviews. I want to read fanfiction! Also, there's another Asian horror movie called The Uninvited - when they remake that, what will the remake be called now?! I think they could have done better. Anyway, this movie will here on out be abbreviated TU.
I know a lot of people are going to cut down TU simply because it's a remake, but I have a more open mind than that. ATOTS was a good movie. However, certain aspects of it were very confusing to me, and I don't think I ever would have gotten it if you guys hadn't explained it to me (
_aiji_ and cleapet). I kind of prefer the stepmonster actually being there throughout the events of the movie instead of the teen stepdaughter being just that crazy as to pretend to be her. I don't know, I go back and forth on that. I mean, on one hand, how nuts do you have to be to openly pretend to be your stepmother to other family members? And on the other hand, that part went totally over my head. To this day, I would still be going, "What the hell was up with that dinner scene?" if you guys hadn't explained it to me. That kind of affected my ability to enjoy the movie. But, I think if I watched it again, I'd probably like it more the second time. (Yes, I have only watched it once.)Really, they changed so many things about the story (added to it) in TU that they really are their own, slightly related movies. I love them both for their own merits.
Now, I have to admit, at least 25% of the reason why I loved TU is the setting. Lake house! With a boat house! Deliveries made by boat right to your dock! It reminded me so heavily of my aunt and uncle's house in Louisiana. They have a big house right on a lake with a boat house and a dock; it's so beautiful. If ever I get rich, I want a house on a lake with a dock and boating and fishing. That may sound weird to those of you who know I can't swim, but that's what life vests are for. :P I still love to go boating and fishing. The whole movie made me think of all the great visits I've had to my aunt and uncle's. ^_^ Well, except for the murders. ;)
Things I learned from IMDB: The family's name is Rydell. (Which instantly makes me think of Grease. :D) I can't remember if it stayed the same from screenplay to movie, but I'll edit this post if I find out different once I see the movie again. EDIT!: In the movie, the family's last name is Ivers. So they did change it. Second, another working title they had for the American version was Apparition. Hey, I like that a lot better! I wish they'd gone with that, because it fits better with the film. There are apparitions throughout the entire movie, and I'm not just talking about Anna and Alex's mom. ;)
Anywho, here's the basic premise: Anna Ivers is coming home from a mental hospital after ten months of treatment. Her mom was sick for a long time and spent some amount of months in the family's boathouse. She liked sleeping better out there. Then one night, a night Anna cannot remember, someone didn't fully shut off the faucet on a container of boat fuel. The gas leaked out of the faucet, a candle ignited it, and BOOOOOM! The boathouse blew up with mom inside. That same night, Anna slit her wrists.
But now she's better. Isn't she? Her doctor seems to think so. As Anna's packing her things, an inmate from across the hall comes over and voices her doubts to Anna, that maybe she's not really well and shouldn't go home. (In a really mean way, even referring to Anna's scarred wrists.) Anna is disturbed and tries to escape her. An orderly comes over and tells the crazy lady to leave Anna alone, let her pack. Crazy lady says to Anna if you leave, who will I tell my stories to? <--- Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz!
Anna runs out to her father, who drives them home. But home has changed. Dad has moved mom's nurse, Rachael, a hot young blonde thang, into the house. Of course, Anna doesn't like the woman who seems to have replaced her dead mother. She finds that Rachael has taken down the chalkboard that hung in the kitchen since Anna was a little girl. The boathouse is being refurbished. But Alex is still there. Alex, Anna's older(?) sister. (She looks older to me, anyway.) They reconnect AND conspire to find as much dirt as they can on Rachael as a way to get out their frustrations over her presence. In fact, Alex claims that dad was fucking Rachael long before mom died, which may explain why mommy slept out in the boathouse.
The girls put the chalkboard back up, ruining Rachael's "perfect Barbie kitchen," hehehe, I liked that. The line goes something like, "Did you see her face? It's like we totally jacked her perfect Barbie kitchen." XD Rachael is played by an actress I've never really seen much of, Elizabeth Banks, and she does a nice balance of "I may be eeeeevil" and "I'm trying to be nice and tolerate my future husband's offspring because I have to." Anna kind of tries to get along with her while Alex is a sarcastic, dry-witted bitch (I really liked her. :D She was funny and was played by one of my favorite young actresses, Arielle Kebbel. The great screamer in The Grudge 2!). She even takes the batteries out of Rachael's vibrator!! XD
But Anna keeps seeing ghosts. She sees her mother, a burned husk in the boathouse, who points at Rachael and rasps, "Murrrrdeeeeer!" She sees a little red-haired girl and her two brothers. (The little girl provides one of my favorite effects when she drops a glass of milk and it turns into blood when the glass shatters. She looks kind of cute in the family photo they show later, but as a ghost was one of the homeliest kids I've ever seen. >_< Death was not kind to her.) What are these ghosts trying to tell her?
Then Anna sees Matt again. Matt was her date at a party the night the boathouse blew up. He tries to tell her that he saw something that night, something related to what really happened, but Rachael interrupts them. They agree to meet at The Rock, a spot really high up on a cliff overlooking the lake (<--- Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz!), at 11pm that night so he can tell her what he knows. Matt doesn't show up. Anna and Alex are perplexed.
Anna has a nightmare that night that Matt comes in her window, dripping wet, and tries to make out with her. Suddenly, his back is all fucked up, and he crawls around on the floor crying out in pain. Anna wakes up to the sound of a helicopter outside.
She and Alex go down to the side of the water to see what's going on. The police drag a body into the boat and, you guessed it, it's Matt... with a broken back. Ooooh.
Anna and Alex believe more and more that Rachael is behind all the deaths, and that they're next on her list. They think that first, she rigged things so the boathouse would blow up and kill Mom. Then she killed Matt to keep him quiet. They start digging up dirt on her. The name on her ID and the name on her passport do not match. They think, aliases! They call up some nursing agency (well, actually, Alex calls the nursing agency <--- Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz!) and find out that Rachael doesn't even exist, according to them. Anna confronts Rachael with this information (which doesn't seem very smart, considering she thinks Rachael is trying to kill her, but I can see it making sense to a teenager that the law and her dad are going to protect her and that she can make accusations without having to worry about her safety), and Rachael basically doesn't dignify such nonsense with an answer. She treats Anna like a scheming teen who's just making up stories to hurt the new woman in her father's life, and kicks her out of her room so she can get ready for the dinner party they're having that night.
During the scene where Alex calls the nursing agency, she provides another great, funny line that reminds me why she's my favorite character in the movie. She's asking about Rachael, whose last name is Summers. The person on the phone asks how her name is spelled. Alex goes, "S-U-M-M... yes, M as in Mom... E-R-S... as in Satan." XD XD
Some point around here, Anna asks her dad straight out if he's going to marry Rachael, and he says yes, they are engaged. She tries to tell him some of the stuff she's found out and he treats her the same as Rachael did on the matter.
At the dinner party, Dad asks Anna to try to get along with Rachael. Rachael is cooking this big roast and she puts it out on the cutting board to cool. Anna's supposed to take out the garbage to make future stepmommy happy, but of course, the garbage fucks with her. It MOVES, which actually scared me because it looked cool. They do a jump scare with a can that falls out of the bag and rolls under the stove. Anna goes to get it, and little red-haired girl jumps out and RAAAH! "You're next!" she says. Anna jumps back into the kitchen's center island, knocking stepmommy's roast to the floor. This next part made me laugh because it was just done really well. Rachael comes in, sees the roast on the floor, thinks Anna did it on purpose to ruin her dinner party, and grabs a steak fork. She shoves it at Anna and yells, "WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO ME?!" in an absolutely perfect mom tone. XD More fuel to make stepmommy look evil. Or is she just the frustrated stepmom dealing with a difficult stepdaughter who almost ruined her dinner party? Then Rachael stabs the roast and puts it back on the cutting board. XD Makes you wonder if she served it to her guests anyway.
At this point, Dad goes out of town for some business meeting. Conveniently leaving Rachael and the girls alone together.
At Matt's funeral, Anna sees the little red-haired girl again. She leads Anna deeper into the cemetery, meeting up with her brothers, and takes Anna right to their graves. The Wright children.
Back at home, Anna and Alex do an internet search for the name. They find the story of the Wright family in old newspapers. Mom died in a car crash. The father hired a nanny to help him look after the children in his wife's absence. Nurse Mildred Kemp was the children's nanny, and she drugged and stabbed all three Wright children to death. (Yes, the red-haired girl and her brothers.) Mildred was obsessed with Mr. Wright and was trying to get everybody out of the way so she'd have him all to herself. Anna and Alex notice that in the family photo, Mrs. Wright is wearing a triple string of pearls that is exactly like a necklace that Rachael has. They think EUREKA! Rachael stole the pearls from Mrs. Wright. Rachael is Mildred Kemp!
What they don't know is that while they are discussing the newspaper article, Rachael is listening outside the door.
The girls think that if they can just take that necklace to the police, they'll have to believe that Rachael is Mildred Kemp. (Yeah, teenager logic again. Maybe if the necklace has some of the Wright's DNA on it, it'll prove something, but otherwise, it's not foolproof evidence.) They set about trying to get it. Alex tells Anna to go downstairs and steal Rachael's keys to the car while she gets the pearls. While downstairs, Anna hears, "Ahhh!" ::ker-thump thump thump!:: from upstairs. Oh noes! She creeps up the stairs and finds Alex half-conscious on the floor. Alex says Rachael snuck up on her and drugged her. Anna doesn't want to leave her, but Alex convinces her to go for help. Anna barely gets away, as Rachael comes running out at the last second and almost gets in the car before she speeds off.
On second viewing, there's a whole scene I'm leaving out here. Anna has a fight scene with Rachael where she manages to get the pearls from her. Rachael seems to admit her guilt during this scene, but does she really? Then Anna barricades herself in Alex's room, where she finds Alex on the floor, and then climbs out the window to escape.
I would think this is the point where Rachael called Anna's father and told him to come home. He shows up in a little bit, and it just makes sense.
Anna tells the whole story to the local police chief. He says hmm, Mildred Kemp, I remember that story. Do you have any proof? Anna plops the necklace down on his desk. Police chief says he's got to check some things out, but Anna is frantic - "We've got to go back to my house NOW, Alex is still there! I'm afraid something bad is going to happen to her!" The police chief gives her a funny look and says something like, "Nothing bad's going to happen to anybody, Anna." <--- Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! He assures her he'll take care of everything, that she should just stay there and sit tight.
Anna falls asleep on the couch in the chief's office. Later, she is awakened by Rachael and the police chief holding her down and injecting her with a sedative. Oh noes, Rachael was able to convince him that Anna is crazy! Back home, Anna wakes up a little and groggily watches as Rachael carries her up the stairs. (Which is a slightly funny thought. I mean, I know Anna is a tiny little thing and Rachael is a nurse used to hefting old sick people, but it's still funny to watch a woman carry a teen girl around.) Rachael puts her on her bed and changes her clothes, putting her in her nightgown, while she babbles and bitches about how Anna has ruined everything. Anna sees a knife on her nightstand, which I guess they're implying she put there earlier for protection, and she tries to reach it. Alex appears at her door, going, "Shhhhh..." so Rachael won't know she's there, and then Anna blacks out.
Sometime later, she wakes up. The house is quiet. Anna goes into the hall and finds blood all over the carpet. The very thick trail of blood leads down the stairs and outside. Anna, with dread, follows it to a trashcan on the porch. She knows she has to look, though, and lifts the lid.
Rachael's head is in the trashcan.
Alex comes around the corner with the knife in her hand. She's got blood all over her, is shaking, and says, "I had to do it. She was going to kill us. You know I had to do it, right?" Of course, Anna knows she had to do it, and they hug.
Just then, Dad arrives at home. The girls stand together, holding hands, ready to tell him everything that happened. Dad's like WTF?!?! He says, "What did you do?!"
THE TWIST WILL LAND IN FIVE... FOUR...
The conversation goes something like this (majorly paraphrasing here):
Anna: "Alex had to do it, Dad! Rachael was going to kill us!"
Dad: "What? ANNA, what have you done?!"
Anna: "I didn't do it, Dad. Alex, tell him!"
Dad: "Anna, stop it!"
Alex: "You always ignore me, Dad!"
Anna: "Dad, listen to her! You never listen to Alex!"
Dad takes Anna by the shoulders and says, "Anna, stop this now. You know what happened to your sister. ALEX IS DEAD. She died in the fire."
DUNT-DUNT-DAAAAAAAAAAH!!
Now, I already knew that twist was going to happen because I had seen the original movie. The really fun part is going back and watching the movie again, knowing Alex is already dead. Seeing how everyone ignored Alex but in a way that it didn't exactly tip you off. Seeing how Anna was the only one who really interacted with her. They do it in a really awesome way, too. Like, one scene, Alex is there, but only Anna really acknowledges her. Then Alex leaves, and Rachael starts talking to Anna about the day she met them, talking about Alex doing her "regular teenage bitchy thing." It makes it seem like Rachael was prompted to talk about Alex's attitude because Alex was being a sarcastic bitch in the previous scene. Very nice. I would have been totally fooled if I hadn't already known Alex was dead.
Anyway, they show Anna finally remembering what really happened the night the boathouse exploded. She caught her father and Rachael having sex, so she was upset. She takes a candle lamp thing out with her to the boathouse to get some gas in a watering can. Upon second viewing, I believe that Anna intended to take the gas into the house and use it to set Rachael on fire. The reason why I think this will be explained when we get to the last scene. Alex comes in from the party and chats with her. Because she's freaking out, Anna doesn't make sure she turns the faucet all the way off. She stomps out with her watering can, and Alex follows her. When she slams the door, the forgotten candle falls to the floor in the path of the rivulet of gas.
It's obvious something's wrong, and Alex tries to get it out of her, but Anna ignores her and goes up the hill in the direction of the house. Alex hears their mother ringing her bell to tell them she wants something. She says, "Coming, Mom," and goes into the boathouse.
A few seconds later, KA-BOOOOOOM!!! Anna whirls around in horror to see her mother and sister go up in flames.
Then they show how her overwhelming guilt led her to concoct the whole story of how Rachael murdered everybody. What adult, much less a teenage girl, would want to admit to anyone else, much less themselves, that their actions led to the deaths of two people they love? I mean, the guilt they heaped on that girl. I love it. :D Even if it was an accident, who wouldn't feel horrible? It's no wonder she tried to kill herself. When they brought her home, it was easier for her mentally disturbed little mind to pretend Alex was still alive, still there for her, and that the evil stepmother was responsible for everything. Anna even went so far as to MURDER MATT, pushing him off the cliff, to keep up her charade that Rachael was trying to hide what she did. Rachael was the perfect person to pin it all on; Anna already hated her for being a home wrecker and all.
But Anna was the one who really killed Rachael. (Turns out she DID get a hold of that knife on the nightstand.) In the end, Rachael was completely innocent! That's the biggest revelation. The police take Anna away, and the chief asks Mr. Ivers why the name on Rachael's passport doesn't match her ID. He replies that she had an ex-boyfriend who was stalking her, so she changed her name. Again, more fuel for Anna's fantasies. The call to the nursing service never happened - ALEX made the "call." More of Anna's delusions. The police chief asks where Anna got all that stuff about Rachael being Mildred Kemp. Where did she even get the idea?
We see Anna back at the mental hospital, now a true murderer. She's cutting Rachael out of all of the recent family pictures. At the beginning of the movie, the doctor told her to go home and be a normal teenager, to "finish what you started." Now, he comes to her door to ask her how she's doing, and she says she did what he said - she finished what she started. This is why I think Anna intended to kill Rachael the night she caught her having sex with her dad; that night, she didn't finish it. But now, she has. The doctor walks away, looking disturbed.
We see the crazy lady from the beginning of the movie, across the hall. She's playing with a triple string of pearls. She says, "Welcome home, Anna," and closes her door.
The name on the door? Mildred Kemp.
TA-DAAAAAA! Those of you who have seen ATOTS can see the big differences between the two films. They become very different stories with all the additions. Like I said, sometimes I like the idea of Soo-mi being so crazy that she actually pretends to be her stepmother so she can create conflict and then save her dead sister from that conflict, and other times, I remember how confused I was the first time I watched the movie because of it. Overall, I like that the American movie didn't copy that part of the story because I'm not sure Americans could have done that part as well as it was done in ATOTS. The things that TU added and changed were done very effectively, so it's good that the Americans stuck with what we do well - body counts! :D
I wish TU had done the two scenes that I liked the best, though - the ghost getting up on the bed with Soo-mi and the ghost reaching out from under the sink to grab... was it the stepmother? Somebody got grabbed. Those two scenes scared the crap out of me. They could have done those scenes in TU. In fact, I remember seeing the ghost reaching out from under the stove and grabbing Anna on the commercial, but they cut it from the final film, for some reason. They did something sort of like the scene where the ghost floated up on the bed with Soo-mi, but the ghost stayed on Anna's floor. :P If they'd included those scenes in TU, the movie would have been PERFECT.
I do like the change of the sister dying in the boathouse explosion. In ATOTS, how did Soo-yeon die, anyway? We saw her find their mother dead in the wardrobe cabinet, and then the cabinet fell on her, and at that point, she was still alive and literally kicking (and screaming for help). But, what? Did they leave her under there to starve to death or something? :P I thought that was too important a detail to leave out. If I missed it, feel free to fill in the details for me.
Technically, Soo-mi didn't kill anybody that I can see. Anna? Accidentally killed two, and purposefully murdered one. Guilt still ate both of them up. Both totally fascinating stories.
Rewatching the scene where Rachael and Anna have a physical fight was even better the second time around because I understood more about what was going on. At this point, Rachael has heard Anna talking to "Alex" in her room, going over this story about Rachael being Mildred Kemp. She's thinking oh my God, Anna's crazy. Not only does she think Alex is still alive, but she thinks I'm a murderer. When Rachael confronts Anna in her bedroom, she talks to her like someone who's trying to calm down an insane person. When Anna grabs for the pearl necklace, Rachael tries to get her with the syringe full of sedative. That's why the fight ensues. The whole scene is really cool once you know how Rachael is really seeing it. When you watch it the first time, you're not entirely sure if the woman is evil or not; she seems to be confessing to her crimes. Anna: "We know what you did!" Rachael (trying to calm down and take control of the crazy girl before her): "You caught me." She's obviously thinking that the safer way to deal with Anna is to play along with her delusions. I'm not sure I wouldn't do something very similar, knowing that the girl is so far gone that she actually talks out loud to her dead sister. (That's a question I would have for the screenwriter. Was it *all* in Anna's head, or in some scenes, was she interacting with her sister's ghost?)
I'd really like to smack some movie reviewers around, though, for spoiling the movie for people who haven't seen ATOTS. I saw more than one review where they referred to the moment where it's revealed that Alex has been dead the whole time as a "Sixth Sense-like twist." Yeah, thanks. That fact is a huge part of the movie's secret. If I hadn't already known that, I would have been SO pissed to have that ruined for me. I mean, if you're reading my summary, you already knew there were huge spoilers. When you read a movie review, you don't expect to have the biggest moment of it ruined for you by some asshole reviewer. Sheesh.
Noticed this on second viewing: The movie seems to take place in Massachusetts. The whole thing with the Wright family took place somewhere near Boston, as revealed by the newspaper articles being in the Boston Herald, about a "local" incident. Which is somewhere "west" of where the Ivers live, in a nearby county. OH, THANK YOU, MOVIE. *crossovers brew in my head*
* <--- Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz! Plot point, buzz!: I stole the Plot Point Alarm from MST3K :D
REMINDER: Under the cut are major, major spoilers for the movies A Tale of Two Sisters and The Uninvited (2009). If you don't want these movies spoiled for you, don't click on the cut!!!
